‘Water Features’ Need To Be Jettisoned Now

Who can explain why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Department of Water and Power keep telling us to use less water and electricity, but the city continues to permit “water features” in new development?

Check out trendy shopping centers, new hotels and office developments, and even the Port of Los Angeles. Everywhere you go, there’s a pool or a fountain with water evaporating under our famous sunshine.

Yes, I know, “it’s all recycled.” Hogwash. Some of it evaporates, some of it spills and dries up, and the rest is pumped around by – you guessed it – the very electricity we’re supposed to conserve.

There is something wrong with this picture, but there is no good excuse.

Sure the permits go through the Planning Department and the Building and Safety Department, while the water and power issues go through the Department of Water and Power. But isn’t our “environmental” mayor in charge of all of these? Isn’t our commitment to conservation and sustainability a commitment by the city of Los Angeles, not just an isolated department here or there?

The Department of Water and Power itself has open-air pools surrounding its downtown headquarters. I’ve been told for years that those pools are necessary for cooling something, but surely they too could be protected from excess evaporation or at least used for cooling ambient tourists’ sore feet.

What kind of message are we sending when we talk conservation of water and electricity – indeed threaten financial penalties for overuse – but then display running water all over the neighborhoods?

It’s the same kind of doublespeak as when the members of the City Council said they had to have the city supply them with hybrid cars or else they’d have to use their personal SUVs. If they want the rest of us to purchase hybrids instead of SUVs, why can’t they do the same? At their salaries, they can certainly afford to put their personal money where their mouths are.

City zoning and building regulations already include all kinds of requirements, such as height restrictions, side-yard setbacks, and the minimum number of wall sockets in each room of a dwelling unit. I’m particularly proud of the city ordinance that requires low-water-use toilets in all single-family residences, an ordinance that occasioned much snickering when I introduced it, but turns out to save an incredible amount of water and to have revolutionized the manufacture of toilets.

The city has come a long way since that ordinance. So why is it that we still permit outdoor “water features”?

As a practical matter, eliminating this wasteful use of water and power requires that someone from the City Council introduce a proposed ordinance, and in today’s climate that may require that someone from the Mayor’s Office instruct a compliant council member to take the lead. One phone call would probably do it. Maybe two phone calls; one call to a council member requesting that she/he introduce a proposal for such an ordinance and another call to the director of planning requesting cooperation. That’s not so hard.

Wise use of resources is a wonderful and achievable goal, but it does require plugging loopholes and using our collective head. Exhorting city residents and businesses to use less water and power is a useful activity, but wise leadership leads by example as well as exhortation.

It’s time for the city to get with its own program.

Ruth Galanter is a former member and president of the Los Angeles City Council, on which she served for 16 years.